September Editor's Letter

Article

Editor's Letter

09 September 2016

This afternoon, I was feeding my son when he shut his tiny mouth and glared at me. I surrendered. I put down the spoon, but not in time: Henry's eyes widened, his lips motored and he sprayed carrot puree all over my face. And then laughed! I wondered if he was trying to contribute to this month’s show. Our September theme is fullness. Genius baby. It’s as if he knew.

With respect to Henry’s brilliance, our ideas about fullness are perhaps more complex than his. He’s full, he smiles and spits. Easy. I don’t yet know, despite my projecting, whether it’s something he wants to feel or not. But for us—podcast-listening grownups, I mean—fullness is a sensation that we chase. We badly want to feel it. Fullness from experience. Fullness from emotion. Fullness from achievement. We pursue it all throughout our lives. The pursuit might be the point.

That’s what I’m thinking after listening to this month’s final cut. Our guests are all going for it, and fiercely. Yasir Salem, a competitive eater and an ultra-marathoner and an Iron Man triathlete is all but addicted to achieving new personal bests with every race. Stephanie Danler would not give up on her dream of writing a novel (her debut, Sweetbitter, is a best seller), but will she stop at one? I’d bet she won’t. Paul Freedman, a Yale professor, took a breather from medieval history to write a fascinating book called Ten Restaurants That Changed America. When I interviewed him about it, Paul spoke with such passion, it’s clear this is only the beginning of new line of study --35 years into his career.

It turns out the people we asked to explain fullness to us are, in fact, insatiable. They’re never going to stop.

As we release “Fullness,” we’re currently the #1 Food podcast on iTunes. We're grateful to you listeners, and we’re just getting started, feeling nowhere near full ourselves. We’re bringing more robust and wider ranging coverage to Prince Street, with an increasing number of web extras and new contributors, too. Last month, acclaimed photographer Michael Halsband joined the team. This month, we’re excited to welcome veteran sports reporter Tim Struby, who will be examining where action and eating intersect. In the coming months, we’ll be filing stories from both coasts, introducing some great new voices and publishing even more original photography and writing on this website. We’ll also be checking in with the correspondents who have made the first half of our first season a hit.